Pajiba

Prince of Darkness.

That movie freaks me out on a visceral level.

Is it a great movie? I'm not sure--it's been a while since I've seen it. But it's a damned effective movie, and I'd love to see Carpenter reach that creative level again.

I want smart, well-acted, well-scripted horror. I don't care if it's a slasher, a home invasion, a monster attack, a creepy town, an evil child/ren, or the gummint gonna get us picture, so long as it's well-made. I don't care if it's funny, scary, suspenseful, slow-burn, psychological, or mind-fucky.

I've only one request. Please, for the love of Godtopus, let horror be well made. I get it's the low-budget genre of Hollywood, but it's not like Korean horrors are being made for hundreds of millions of dollars. Or Japanese horror films. Or Chinese horror films. Or Spanish horror films. Or German horror films. Or French ho--you get the point.

You don't have to keep casting WB/CW cast-offs in every horror. You don't have to give the same directors the keys to the vault if they're producing shit on a consistent basis. And you don't have to use MSPaint if the budget is too low for proper CGI. Ain't no shame in splashing on the tinted Caro syrup and calling it blood.

Lots and lots of cheerleaders and sorority girls being killed.

That's all I ask, and happily, the horror genre usually delivers.

I love fantasy. I love horror. Sadly, both genres get the short end too often.

Part of it is that there are few genre directors. There's no John Carpenter or George Romero out there. The best we got is Eli Roth. Really. (I take out Sam Raimi because he's doing other stuff).

The surprising thing is that horror is arguably the most flexible of genres. It adapts to any time, situation, characters or setting. You can have futuristic horror and ancient time horror. You can have aliens, cannibals, ghosts, zombies, weirdos, crazies, experiments, demons and everything in between.

And everyone from Steven Spielberg to James Cameron started in horror. But there seems to be a stigma that you can't make a horror film once you're famous. Shame.

I want it to be a good movie, whatever aspect of horror it's doing, or I want it to dumb and fun. Kill everyone in your movie if it's not a great horror movie. That alligator movie Rogue was stupid but it was also boring. Don't do that.

I think the scariest horror movies tap into our fears of being powerless. It's not the surprising deaths that keep us on the edge of our seats, it's when we're empathizing with the hero as he faces seemingly insurmountable odds. It's why horror movies with kids can be so effective. If you're a parent, the thought of losing your child is more terrifying than that of being hacked up by a axe-wielding mad man yourself...but even if you're not, you remember being a child and not having the skills to defeat even ordinary terrors.

I'll watch movies where pretty teens get slaughtered but it's for the camp value and not the horror aspect of it.

No jump scares.

They're predictable and not at all scary.

Ultimately, I want a horror movie to provoke a genuine reaction from me, preferably visceral fear. This doesn't require a huge budget, just a story that is told well. I feel that movies like the original Omen, Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist remain scary even after so many years because they play off imagery and ideas that affect people at their cores. There's more to them than just a person fleeing from something scary; there's a real conflict between the main characters and something horrifying, whether it's an entity or evil in a less definable form. I think that's what makes them effective.

Of course, I also enjoy a horror movie to test my boundaries. This can be done through gore, although it doesn't have to be the gore itself, but the intent behind it. A great example is the French movie Inside. It's a simple story, but brutal considering the motives of the antagonist.

And barring all that - I'll take a great trashy horror movie like Piranha or Toolbox Murders and kick back with a few beers and enjoy them for just being fun to watch.

How about working on a scarier atmosphere? The scariest part of The Grudge (which, I understand, a lot of people didn't find that scary) was the part where Sarah Michelle's Gellar is on a bus in broad daylight and STILL sees the fucking ghost briefly pop out of nowhere. Creating a world where you are never safe and therefore always on edge might be a good start.

I want the tension that jimmy mentioned.

But what I REALLY want is for the horror to be thought out and acted by the performers. Look at Roddy McDowall in Fright Night. The movie has its share of cheesiness and flaws, but when his character killed a werewolf in self defense, the real horror was on his face as he watched the monster transform into a dying boy.

Characters in horror films do all kinds of terrible, violent shit in self defense. Let's see them react to their own actions like normal people would. It'll help us actually give a damn whether they make it through the film alive.

Thrillo, I hated Funny Games. It seemed too self-aware and too full of itself. Like it was trying to say "Look how smart and edgy we are!"

writermonkey Yes! I'm glad someone besides myself appreciated Inside. I initially put that movie on when I was alone in the house - then, my housemates came back, and I thought 'that's it, everyone's going to start nattering and I won't get to watch this properly' - but no. They quickly became engrossed in the film. Then, at various points throughout the movie, four of our friends dropped by to hang out - and one by one, each of them found themselves sitting forward in their seats, quietly and nervously watching the movie, never taking their eyes off it. After it finished, the other six guys turned around to look at me, and one jokingly said "Dill, what the fuck is wrong with you?" - but they all said that it was an intense, disturbing movie.

Hell yes Pajiba. Behind the Mask owns.

I want to see a horror film that has an actual plot that's not just a vehicle for scares and characters who are interesting and act like real people. Even the horror films I like dont tend to have these. Also, I want to ban jump scares, they're scary for about half a second, then all tension is ruined.

I'm afraid I'm a bit old-fashioned. OK, I just old, but I like my horror sans blood and guts and scares. Horror should not be slashers, boobs, guts, etc. Those are slasher movies, and they certainly have their audience, but they are not horror movies. I like horror when it's sexy Dracula and mind games and bustles.

The only way I can articulate what I'd like to see in horror is by example, therefore here are some of the horror movies that have really impressed me in over the years:

Session 9
Paranormal Activity
Ringu
Ju-on
The Descent
Let the Right One in
The Thing
Alien
Seven (Some may say this isn't a horror movie and I wouldn't argue)
Silence of the Lambs (ditto)
Audition
The Host
28 days Later (the first 30 minutes anyway)
Salem's Lot
the third story of Trilogy of Terror (The Devil Doll)
Exorcist
Psycho
Night of the Demon
Dawn of the Dead
Halloween
Evil Dead

I'm not a fan in general of comedy/horror hybrids.

Torture porn and slasher flicks are the same to me. Every now and then a good one comes along but most are either bad, mediocre or derivative.

I want a horror movie to make me feel unsafe in my own house. I want to be so goddamned creeped out that I consider sleeping with the lights on. I believe a successful horror movie shouldn't show you too much of whatever it is that is terrifying everyone - what I can imagine in my own head is far scarier to me than anything anyone else can show me. A good horror movie should be creative and unique and should avoid stereotypical horror movie tropes and unrealistic situations. One of my least favorite of these contrived situations is the group of 'friends' on a road trip who for some reason all seem to fucking hate each other because they do nothing but continually insult each other and treat each other with contempt and hostility. Oh, and the group is ALWAYS made up of at least a few of these offensive stereotypical characters:
- the jock
- the rich guy
- the 'slut'
- the goth chick
- the stoner
- the 'good girl'
- the shy, nerdy guy
- the 'nice guy'
- the artist
- the black guy.
Come. The fuck. On. Hate this.
The best horror movie I've seen recently was "The Possession of David O'Reilly". It was imaginative, menacing, and effective in making me want my mommy. Part of what made it so effective is that it was well-written, well-acted, and didn't rely on stereotypes. The characters felt authentic, so when shit started hitting the fan you actually cared. You were able to identify with them, to put yourself in their situation long enough to wonder how you would handle what was happening. And once you let that happen, the fear just kind of moves itself in a little bit, becomes a little more real. And maybe the lights stay on when you go to bed.

I'll just put in my agreement with some of the above requests:

No jump scares! (h/t figgy) Possibly only *quiet* jump scares, like the scene in The Strangers where the camera pans back slowly and the intruder is standing, quietly, looking at Liv Tyler. It's the very stillness of it that's scary, not the SUDDEN LOUD MUSIC!!1!

Pretty much everything Robert says. In particular, I want horror movies to be better acted!! I realize that a) in most horror movies, much of the cast is "cannon fodder", so nobody cares if they can act, and b) vacuous plastic CW-type 20-something stars are relatively cheap to hire, yet they may have some "name recognition" that producers think will bring audiences.

I want the actors to be able to convey the emotions of fear, suprise, doubt, puzzlement, determination to survive, etc. I want them to seem like real people that I might actually care about (or hate, if that's warranted, for reasons other than the vacuity of the actor). Hand in hand with that goes better scripts, obviously. But I think even some of the mediocre scripts of recent horror movies might have seemed better, or at least more lively, if the actors had been a little better.

And no stupid CGI blood. And CGI monsters only if you can do it really, REALLY well. Karo and red dye were scarin' the masses when we were all knee-high to a grasshopper, and they still work pretty good. You can still watch The Thing and be scared by corn syrup and latex prosthetics.

As a personal favor, no more "backwoods inbred hillbillies are cannibals" movies. It's just dumb, not interesting, not realistic. And easily carbon copied over and over and over... I grant you, I am personally grossed out by cannibalism *more* than other forms of horror and torture, but I don't mind a decent cannibalism story (Alive! or Ravenous) being told if there's a half-way decent premise and some sort of reasoning or exploring of it.

After all that: really, there's nothing new under the sun, so I don't expect horror writers/directors to reinvent the wheel or find a new "twist". Just put a little more effort into whatever type of story you choose to tell, into making it a coherent story. (And get decent actors.) Thanks in advance!!

For me, "The Ring" is the standard of what I find horrific and hypnotizing in a horror film. I want to be immersed in the environment. I want an intriguing and disturbing backstory. I want to be shown enough gore and horrific images to be frightened, but not enough so that I'm not forced to mentally fill in the blanks myself. I want a main character that is relatable, sympathetic and intelligent. I want to think about the movie for years after first seeing it because it got under my skin that badly.

No more "slashers," they'd be absolutely pathetic to watch in these days of stun guns, real guns, pepper spray; you'd hate the victims for being so unprepared that their deaths would be reduced to hollow fx & "bring on the next idiot."

There are many great, American horror flix that I'd put up against current Asian and European films like 'Ichi the Killer' and 'Let The Right One In'.

But I personally have three ultimate horror movie favorites in 40 years of absorbing virtually every horror film made, and the best, and sadly most recent of these is the 70's film 'The Exorcist'.

Brian asks, "..are we in need of a new Exorcist?" Maybe the more jaded generation of today laughs that idea off, like I grin behind my dad's back when he talks about how scary 'The Tingler' was.

'Evil Dead', 'Dead Alive', 'Re-Animator', too many great Horror movies in the last few decades alone to mention here: they brought on the horror, the gore, and entertainment that the Freddies and Jasons of the previous decade never quite delivered.

But pure stomach-churning, disturbing, nightmare-inducing, shit-in-your-pants scary?? I STILL have yet to see a 'horror' film as visceral, bleak, brutal and nerve-wracking as 'The Exorcist'. The fact that it was made by a director who had no previous experience or discernable interest in the horror genre beforehand makes the film that much more amazing.

I'm looking for that same amazement, that unsettling awe of seeing a familiar hallway with an ordinary door that emanates a terrifying glow, swept open in the middle of the day and revealing a demonic, bone-chilling shell of a person you love being completely overtaken (or 'possessed') by a force you can't explain or defend yourself from. You don't have to believe in the devil, or hell, or even an otherworldly presence like in 'Rosemary's Baby' or 'The Evil Dead' - 'The Exorcist' works equally as an inexplicable psychological phenomenon or whatever 'boogey man' or monster-in-the-closet nightmare the witnesses perceive them to be.
I still look for that essence in a horror film, and I honestly believe it won't ever be adequately repeated or improved upon.

I have seen the nadir of horror films, I had the misfortune to stumble upon a new horror movie due to be released that is about a.........killer tyre called Robert. The movie is called 'Rubber'. You have been warned.